Frankie Hill
NOTE: This page is not free to edit. Characters are solely owned by ScottyBlue (dA name Ascotia-Bluefleck. Also, Spoilers below.) '''Francis Jeremiah "Frankie" Hill '''was the morally upright grandson of the wealthy Elvira Hill. He had one sibling, his sister Ruthanne. His mother Reba died giving birth to him, and his father, Elvira's son Jeremiah, was killed overseas in WWI, in 1918. A few weeks before he died, Jeremiah sent Frankie and Ruthanne some trinkets he got while in England, including a set of Sherlock Holmes books. Frankie read and became obsessed with these, vowing to someday be a detective or police officer himself. As a child, Frankie had three characteristics that made him both remarkable and unlikable to most adults he came across; he was scrupulously honest to the point of tactlessness, had a nearly photographic memory, and was extremely curious. His sister Ruthanne knew there was no harm in him, and constantly stuck up for him, when Frankie would prefer just to let insults slide. When he was 10, Frankie, then living with his grandmother, witnessed a strange sight. A large party was being thrown for the little town of Stearnsville, in honor of the new year. While playing hide and seek with other children at the party, Frankie was alone in an empty room when a man and woman came in and started fighting. Frankie looked out just in time to see the woman be attacked by the man, seize a poker, and beat off her attacker, finally jabbing him in the stomach and knocking him down. Frankie fled as soon as he got the chance, but the man and woman were both gone when he returned with his friends. When the body of local businessman Herb Cromarty was discovered outside, stabbed to death, Frankie assumed he was the man he saw attacked, and told his story to the police. Frankie was the star witness at the trial of Brenda Gilbert, whom Frankie identified by her voice as the female participant. However, his story was ripped apart by witnesses who saw the dead man elsewhere at the time Frankie claimed to have seen him fight her. This, and the fact Frankie was known to be obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, made the little gossipy town brand him a liar, a label which stuck all the way to his teen years. Only Ruthanne and their friends Myron and Addie believed him, and Frankie stuck to his story unwaveringly. Even when another man - Myron's uncle Ross DeAndrea - was hanged for the crime, Frankie knew what he saw had been true, and insisted DeAndrea was innocent. He and Ruthanne still were extremely close, even as their friends continued to drift away over time, until they were almost all each other had. Frankie finally left his hometown when he was in his late teens, unable to bear the injustice of the innocent man's hanging and himself falsely being branded a liar. His grandmother, who had tried for years to force him to confess he lied, threatened to disinherit him if he left without doing anything to repair the family name he had made a laughingstock of. Frankie told her to go right on ahead and do it, wanting nothing more to do with her. He tried to get Ruthanne to come with him, but Ruthanne decided to stick around and not fight against Elvira just yet, in hopes she could get the inheritance and then give it to Frankie to pay him back for the injustice. Frankie took great exception to this plan of hers, sensing something disastrous would happen, but she was adamant and he could not convince her to not go through with it no matter how hard he tried. Frankie went to a police academy and became an officer, working in Raleigh for three years and receiving acclaim for his skill and his sense of duty. During this time, he continued to write his sister, and they corresponded so frequently that it was almost the same as living together. While in Raleigh, Frankie also met Dillon Bradigan, literally bumping into him one day (with his car). Fortunately, Dillon was only bruised, and Frankie offered to buy him dinner to make up for the accident. Dillon bore him no hard feelings, and the two discovered that they had both spent a few years as policeman in the past, and that they both also were mostly alone in the world. Frankie was by this time working for Ned Black's private detective agency, and suggested Dillon apply for a job as well. Dillon was hired, and they worked as partners for several years, solving several cases together and becoming extremely close friends. Frankie also got Dillon to stop drinking, a habit he had entertained since age 16. Dillon, in turn, nursed Frankie back to health and took on extra work at the detective agency when Frankie was very ill with a stomach disease, which left Frankie with ulcers that he suffered from periodically ever afterwards. Elvira finally died, and Frankie's suspicion that Ruthanne ought not to have let herself be bullied was proved correct when it was revealed Elvira had lost all her money in 1929's great crash. He tried to scrape together enough money so Ruthanne could come live with him, but just couldn't seem to manage it, so they continued to write to each other. Frankie never forgot Ross DeAndrea, and continued trying to find answers about the case even after he had moved away and made a new life for himself in Raleigh. Finally, 17 years after the murder took place, something that his Uncle Cletus said made Frankie realize that neither Brenda Gilbert nor Ross DeAndrea had killed Cromarty, and that the real killer was still out there. Frankie went back to Stearnsville without telling Dillon or Ruthanne, and discovered that Herb Cromarty died by accidentally falling on a sharp object, not by murder. He also discovered Ross DeAndrea had been framed by Luke Cromarty, the son of the dead man, who turned out to be the one Frankie saw attack Mrs. Gilbert and get beaten. Frankie realized Luke had set up the scene of the accident to look as a murder, with clues pointing to DeAndrea, whom he had a vendetta against. He had succeeded with what was nearly the perfect murder by getting DeAndrea falsely convicted and hanged. However, when Frankie tried to gather enough proof to expose Luke Cromarty's lies to the police, Cromarty found out what he was up to and ransacked his hotel room looking for the proofs. However, Frankie had been one step ahead of him and sent them by bag on a train to Kannapolis,where he planned to pick them up later.Furious at finding nothing, Cromarty immediately tried to ambush and kill Frankie twice, first by shooting at him in ambush and then by trying to burn down the hotel he was in, as he was the only guest at the time. Frankie discovered both these traps and escaped before they could be carried out, returning to Raleigh a very frightened man.. Ruthanne and Dillon had arranged to meet Frankie there, so he could tell them what he had been up to. Frankie realized that Cromarty had followed him when he saw his apartment had also been ransacked and his medicine had been tampered with. Not taking the poison, Frankie called Ruthanne and changed the meeting place to somewhere more private. They agreed to meet on the banks of the local river. Before going, Frankie realized Luke was waiting outside to ambush him, just in case the poison didn't work. He climbed out the back window and scrawled a quick message to Ruthanne and Dillon, sticking it under his bed with some chewing gum. As Frankie walked through the fog towards the river, he realized Cromarty had seen through the ruse when a bullet tore a gash in his shoulder. Frankie could have killed Cromarty then and there in self defense with his own gun, being an excellent shot. However, he realized doing so would not help clear DeAndrea's name as well as a confession would. He also realized Cromarty would kill Dillon and Ruthanne without compunction if he thought they knew anything. When Cromarty fired at him again, he pretended to be hit and fell into the river. The plan worked, and Cromarty returned to Stearnsville without knowing Ruthanne or Dillon were there or hurting them, convinced the truth had died with Frankie. Frankie was washed down the fast-flowing river for nearly a mile before he made it to shore. He hid out in the woods until his stomach condition got the better of him, growing a beard and in general changing his appearance to that of a hobo, finding himself declared dead and mourned by his former police friends and by Ned Black, when he shuffled into the nearest town and read the papers. Ruthanne and Dillon also mourned him - Frankie had had no time to explain to them that he was faking his death to protect them, and they thought he really had died. Frankie had anticipated he might have to fake his death in some way when he found the poison in his apartment, and the letter he had left was a brief message saying "I love you, and would never hurt you, Ruthie. Please remember The Empty House", the story in which a presumed-dead Sherlock Holmes returns to life, so his sister would understand what he'd done. However, they took it literally and went back to the now-empty Elvira Hill residence to search for clues, finding out the same things that Frankie did. They also collected his bag of evidence from Kannapolis when they found the ticket stub in his coat, which had washed ashore in a different place from where Frankie himself came from the river. Frankie did not know of either of these two things, and instead set about 'resurrecting' himself with a couple friends from his police days, telling them and his former chief of what had happened and the reason for secrecy. They contacted Stearnsville police, who, under a new and more open-minded Sheriff than the former administration that had hung Ross DeAndrea, agreed to help. Therefore, Frankie was surprised and horrified when he and two Stearnsville police officers came to confront Luke Cromarty, hoping to scare a confession from him, and found Ruthanne and Dillon still believing he was dead, already confronting Cromarty, and about to get themselves shot. He burst in to apprehend Cromarty before anyone got hurt, terrifying not only the killer but Dillon and Ruthanne as well. Once the truth was known, and the trio were happily reunited, Frankie returned to Raleigh with his sister and best friend, much to the delight of Ned Black, who nearly went into hysterics when he learned his best operative was still alive after the ordeal. Thanks to Frankie's influence, Ruthanne became the first female operative at the agency and the trio worked together as a team, eventually taking over the agency as the Hill-Bradigan Detective Agency when Ned Black retired. Frankie would later marry his childhood friend Addie, but they never had any children. Because of his ulcers, and other health conditions, Frankie did not participate in World War II or get called up for draft in later years, and stayed a detective until his own retirement at the age of 70. Category:In Memory of Frankie Hill Characters